Tuesday, 3 February 2015

LATEST UK ELECT FORECAST - Hung Parliament - Labour Short By 45 - SNP Support Would Not Be Enough

This month the Scottish National Party is again forecast to have a key role
after the next UK General Election - but the 44 seats forecast for the SNP, down on the more
than 50 seats suggested by previous UK-Elect forecasts, would not quite be sufficient to give an Labour/SNP alliance
an overall majority.
In fact, in theory, the result forecast would leave any Labour/SNP alliance needing to secure the support of one
other MP
to obtain an overall majority. Of course, in reality any result
similar to that forecast would put the SNP in a very strong position to
choose who governs Britain.
Taken together with the rise of the UK Independence Party and the fall
in Liberal Democrat support in the polls,
there can be little doubt that British politics is going through one
of its most fascinating periods ever.

This forecast was done by the UK-Elect v9.2 method.
This method, a little less experimental than the technique used in the
previous two UK-Elect forecasts, is based on the traditional Uniform
Swing
forecasting technique, but enhanced to take take account of many other
factors such as regional differences,
recent local constituency opinion polls and byelections, tactical
voting, enhanced levels of support for incumbent
candidates (particularly from smaller parties), and the use of
multiple iterations to achieve the correct target percentages. (The
Greens
will be disappointed to see that Norwich South, a four-party contest,
is forecast to be won by Labour using this more mainstream forecasting
configuration.)

(If you prefer to forecast using alternative forecasting methods, your own
percentages, the current opinion polls,
using tactical voting, or even using different electoral systems, browse the
UK-Elect on-line shop .

Notes: The forecast base was the 2010 General Election, although
gains are compared with the current situation (at February 2nd 2015).
The UK-Elect v9.2 forecasting method was used. This is based on Uniform National Swing, but the
forecast was made on a separate regional basis for Scotland, Wales, London, and Great Britain,
with many other factors taken into consideration, including by-election results, local constituency
opinion polls, tactical voting, and enhanced support for incumbent parties. Options to compensate for some of the oddities
of UNS were also set - e.g. to prevent the forecasting of negative vote totals.
Multiple iterations were used to achieve the correct target percentages.
See
UK Election Forecasting Theory, Techniques and Controversial Discussions
and
UK Election Forecasting - A detailed explanation of the techniques used by UK-Elect
for more details of UK-Elect forecasting techniques, or if you have a
Windows-based PC then try some forecasting yourself using the UK-Elect Trial Version
UK-Elect v9.2 users can reproduce the above forecast by doing a
UK-Elect v9.2 "Guided Forecast" and specifying the separate
percentages for Scotland, Wales, London and the overall GB percentages.
Note that additional tactical voting and incumbency support
was NOT enabled, but that UK-Elect v9.2 method includes built-in support
for incumbency in any case.
Results from Northern Ireland are based on those of the last election and
included for completeness only.Suggestions and Corrections: UK election forecasts are
sometimes very controversial. To notify us of any suggested change to this one,
or to let us know of any part of it that is just dead wrong, please email
us on
support@ukelect.co.uk.

UK GENERAL ELECTION 2015 SEATS WON

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